RECOMMENDATORY VERSES.

ON

MR DRYDEN'S

RELIGIO LAICI.

BEGONE, you slaves, you idle vermin, go,
Fly from the scourges, and your master know;
Let free, impartial men from Dryden learn
Mysterious secrets of high concern,
And weighty truths, solid convincing sense,
Explained by unaffected eloquence,

What can you, Reverend Levi, here take ill?
Men still had faults, and men will have them still;
He that hath none, and lives as angels do,

Must be an angel;-but what's that to you?
While mighty Lewis finds the Pope too great,
And dreads the yoke of his imposing seat,
Our sects a more tyrannic power assume,

And would for scorpions change the rods of Rome.
That church detained the legacy divine;
Fanatics cast the pearls of heaven to swine:
What, then, have honest thinking men to do,
But chuse a mean between the usurping two?
Nor can the Egyptian patriarch blame a muse,
Which for his firmness does his heat excuse;
Whatever counsels have approved his creed,
The preface, sure, was his own act and deed.
Our church will have the preface read, you'll say:
'Tis true, but so she will the Apocrypha;
And such as can believe them freely may.
But did that God, so little understood,
Whose darling attribute is being good,
From the dark womb of the rude chaos bring
Such various creatures, and make man their king,

Yet leave his favourite, man, his chiefest care,
More wretched than the vilest insects are?

O! how much happier and more safe are they,
If helpless millions must be doom'd a prey
To yelling furies, and for ever burn

In that sad place, from whence is no return,
For unbelief in one they never knew,

Or for not doing what they could not do!

The very fiends know for what crime they fell, And so do all their followers that rebell; It then a blind, well-meaning Indian stray, Shall the great gulph be shewed him for the way? For better ends our kind Redeemer died, Or the fallen angels' rooms will be but ill supplied. That Christ, who at the great deciding day, (For he declares what he resolves to say,) Will damn the goats for their ill-natured faults, And save the sheep for actions, not for thoughts, Hath too much mercy to send them to hell, For humble charity, and hoping well.

To what stupidity are zealots grown, Whose inhumanity, profusely shewn

In damning crowds of souls, may damn their own!S

I'll err, at least, on the securer side,

A convert free from malice and from pride.

ROSCOMMON.

TŐ

MR DRYDEN,

ON HIS POEM CALLED

RELIGIO LAICÌ.

GREAT is the task, and worthy such a muse,
To do faith right, yet reason disabuse.
How cheerfully the soul does take its flight
On faith's strong wings, guided by reason's light?

But reason does in vain her beams display,

Shewing to th' place, whence first she came, the way

If Peter's heirs must still hold fast the key.

The house, which many mansions should contain,
Formed by the great wise Architect in vain,
Of disproportion justly we accuse,

If the strait gate still entrance must refuse.

The only free enriching port God made,
What shameful monopoly did invade ?
One factious company engrossed the trade.
Thou to the distant shore hast safely sailed,
Where the best pilots have so often failed.
Freely we now may buy the pearl of price;
The happy land abounds with fragrant spice,
And nothing is forbidden there but vice.

Thou best Columbus to the unknown world!
Mountains of doubt, that in thy way were hurled,
Thy generous faith has bravely overcome,
And made heaven truly our familiar home.
Let crowds impossibilities receive;

Who cannot think, ought not to disbelieve.

Let them pay tithes, and hood-winked go to heaven :
But sure the quaker could not be forgiven,
Had not the clerk, who hates lay-policy,
Found out, to countervail the injury,
Swearing, a trade of which they are not free.
Too long has captive reason been enslaved,
By visions scared, and airy phantasms braved,
List'ning to each proud enthusiastic fool,
Pretending conscience, but designing rule;
Whilst law, form, interest, ignorance, design,
Did in the holy cheat together join.
Like vain astrologers, gazing on the skies,
We fall, and did not dare to trust our eyes.
'Tis time at last to fix the trembling soul,
And by thy compass to point out the pole;
All men agree in what is to be done,

And each man's heart his table is of stone,
Where he the god-writ character may view;
Were it as needful, faith had been so too.
Oh, that our greatest fault were humble doubt,
And that we were more just, though less devout!
What reverence should we pay thy sacred rhymes,
Who, in these factious too-believing times,
Has taught us to obey, and to distrust;
Yet, to ourselves, our king, and God, prove just.
Thou want'st not praise from an insuring friend;
The poor to thee on double interest lend.
So strong thy reasons, and so clear thy sense,
They bring, like day, their own bright evidence;
Yet, whilst mysterious truths to light you bring,
And heavenly things in heavenly numbers sing,
The joyful younger choir may clap the wing.

то

MR DRYDEN,

ON

RELIGIO LAICI.

'Tis nobly done, a layman's creed profest,
When all our faith of late hung on a priest;
His doubtful words, like oracles received,
And, when we could uot understand, believed.
Triumphant faith now takes a nobler course,
'Tis gentle, but resists intruding force.
Weak reason may pretend an awful sway,
And consistories charge her to obey;
(Strange nonsense, to confine the sacred Dove,
And narrow rules prescribe how he shall love,
And how upon the barren waters move.)
But she rejects and scorns their proud pretence,
And, whilst those grovling things depend on sense,
She mounts on certain wings, and flies on high,
And looks upon a dazzling mystery,

With fixed, and steady, and an eagle's eye.
Great king of verse, that dost instruct and please,
As Orpheus softened the rude savages;
And gently freest us from a double care,
The bold Socinian, and the papal chair:
Thy judgment is correct, thy fancy young,

Thy numbers, as thy generous faith, are strong:
Whilst through dark prejudice they force their way,
Our souls shake off the night, and view the day.
We live secure from mad enthusiasts' rage,
And fond tradition, now grown blind with age.
Let factious and ambitious souls repine,
Thy reason's strong, and generous thy design;
And always to do well is only thine.
THO. CREECH.

RELIGIO LAICI.

DIM as the borrowed beams of moon and stars
To lonely, weary, wandering travellers,
Is reason to the soul: and as, on high,
Those rolling fires discover but the sky,
Not light us here; so reason's glimmering ray
Was lent, not to assure our doubtful way,
But guide us upward to a better day.
And as those nightly tapers disappear,
When day's bright lord ascends our hemisphere;
So pale grows reason at religion's sight,

So dies, and so dissolves in supernatural light.
Some few, whose lamp shone brighter, have been led
From cause to cause, to nature's sacred head,.
And found that one First Principle must be:
But what, or who, that universal He;
Whether some soul encompassing this ball,
Unmade, unmoved; yet making, moving all;
Or various atoms' interfering dance
Leaped into form, the noble work of chance;
Or this great All was from eternity,-
Not even the Stagyrite himself could see,
And Epicurus guessed as well as he.